In a recent feat we had a discussion about a feat saying "Whenever you cast a prepared arcane spell ..." against "You can choose to take a –1 penalty ...".

I think you can always choose not to use a feat it you want (naturally you lose both the benefit and possible drawbacks) while the other poster thought that if it lack the "You can choose" text you are forced to sue it.

2 days ago I did made a post in in a online campaign thread, it was just after this post.
It was a perception check, the whole text was:
Perception:1d20 + 6 ⇒ (9) + 6 = 15
and the result was a 22.
I clearly saw the result of the die roll, and even saw the post a few hours later, now it has disappeared.

As I was able to see it after a few hours I hadn't simply made a preview of the result and forgot to submit it. I had no reason to add further text to the check so there was no motive to made a preview before submitting the result.

I am not completely sure, but I am under the impression that a couple of post by other poster I had read in the forum have disappeared too.

If it can be relevant, I am using Firefox 47.0.1 and when I closed the browser after making that post (and a lot of other stuff) the browser closed improperly.

Playing a druid I have noticed a thing:
- you can't stack effects that reduce your size
- you can't stack effects that increase your size.
- nothing seem to stop you from stacking an effect that increase your size with an effect that reduce it.

For a druid that often is useful as Animal growth will probably make your animal companion huge, making difficult for it to navigate most dungeon, but combining reduce animal and animal growth will give it a hefty bonus to strength and constitution while keeping its original size.

I am missing some rule? RAI probably they aren't meant to stack, but apparently there is nothing in the RAW saying that.

Both spells are transmutations but not polymorph.

The text stopping the stacking of similar size change effects:

"Multiple magical effects that increase size do not stack."
"Multiple magical effects that reduce size do not stack."

AFAIK there is nothing saying "Multiple magical effects that change size do not stack."

The questions will be in 2 separated posts to get more specific FAQs if possible.

1) Swift or free actions can be taken together with readied actions?

Pro position:

PRD wrote:

You can perform one or more free actions while taking another action normally.

You are taking an action so you you can take one or more free actions together.

Swift actions are a bit more dicey as you can take them during your turn and the ready action say after your turn.

Against:

PRD wrote:

Ready

The ready action lets you prepare to take an action later, after your turn is over but before your next one has begun.

Your turn has ended, so you can take only the ready action and those actions specifically allowed by a rule or a FAQ.

To make some examples:
If you can reload a crossbow as a swift/free action, can you do that after firing it as a ready action?
If you throw a dagger, you can use quickdraw to draw a new weapon (not necessarily another dagger)?
Drop prone after acting?

The constrictor snake presented here is a relatively small one. You can create stats for a larger maneater like an anaconda by applying the advanced and giant simple templates, or by advancing the stats above to a 7 HD Large snake (CR 5), or even a 14 HD Huge snake (CR 10).

....
Venomous snakes are generally far more aggressive than constrictor snakes, and even larger variants do exist: you can create stats for a king cobra, for example, by applying the advanced and giant simple templates to the stats given above.(Those are the stats of a medium sized snake)

RAW you can't wildshape or use beast shapes to turn into a templated version of a creature.

On the other hand the description of the snakes say clearly that in nature larger versions that those depicted in the bestiary exist. Those versions aren't printed in the rules simply to save space.

So how do you think it should work:
- a druid or someone using beastshape II and above can't turn into a large snake unless he can find a printed description somewhere;
- a druid or someone using beastshape II can turn into a large snake as they exist in nature.

For the RL argument:

Wikipedia wrote:

The king cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) is an elapid found predominantly in forests from India through Southeast Asia. This species is the world's longest venomous snake, with a length up to 18.5 to 18.8 ft (5.6 to 5.7 m).

As for the title, I recall seeing a mythic ability that allow access to classes and prestige classes even if you don't have the prerequisites. I think it was a trickster ability, but now I can't find it.
Any idea if it really exist and where it is?

Certain effects give a character temporary hit points. These hit points are in addition to the character's current hit point total and any damage taken by the character is subtracted from these hit points first. Any damage in excess of a character's temporary hit points is applied to his current hit points as normal. If the effect that grants the temporary hit points ends or is dispelled, any remaining temporary hit points go away. The damage they sustained is not transferred to the character's current hit points.

When temporary hit points are lost, they cannot be restored as real hit points can be, even by magic.

From the above, temporary hit point work against non lethal damage.

Occult Classes wrote:

Burn (Ex): At 1st level, a kineticist can overexert herself to channel more power than normal, pushing past the limit of what is safe for her body by accepting burn. Some of her wild talents allow her to accept burn in exchange for a greater effect, while others require her to accept a certain amount of burn to use that talent at all. For each point of burn she accepts, a kineticist takes 1 point of nonlethal damage per character level. This damage can’t be healed by any means other than getting a full night’s rest, which removes all burn and associated nonlethal damage. Nonlethal damage

from burn can’t be reduced or redirected, and a kineticist incapable of taking nonlethal damage can’t accept burn. A kineticist can accept only 1 point of burn per round. This limit rises to 2 points of burn at 6th level, and rises by 1 additional point every 3 levels thereafter. A kineticist can’t choose to accept burn if it would put her total number of points of burn higher than 3 + her Constitution modifier (though she
can be forced to accept more burn from a source outside her control). A kineticist who has accepted burn never benefits from abilities that allow her to ignore or alter the effects she receives from nonlethal damage.

The non lethal damage from burn isn't reduced, redirected or healed. It is simply absorbed by a hit point buffer.

I think that the RAI is that the non lethal damage should be applied against your normal hit point and not against the temporary hit points, but I can see some argument in favor of the opposite interpretation too.

There is some piece of the rules that can clarify what interpretation is right?

This thread is born from a post about the use of a Ring of animal Friendship.

What is needed to communicate to a creature with animal or lower intelligence that it should not resist against a spell or that he should willingly accept it?

The concept is really difficult to convey even if you can speak with the creature thanks to Speak with animals. Even less if you have to use handle animal.

I think it will be part of the training of creatures like animal companions or similar, probably it should count as a trick, but for untrained animals it can be a problem.

A partially related example:

Air walk wrote:

You can cast air walk on a specially trained mount so it can be ridden through the air. You can train a mount to move with the aid of air walk (counts as a trick; see Handle Animal skill) with 1 week of work and a DC 25 Handle Animal check.

That give us a precedent to how we can train a animal to get it to do something unnatural.

Examples of things where this can be important:
- teleport: it require willing targets;
- animal growth: it has fortitude negates and no harmless tag

The Harmless tag say: "(harmless): The spell is usually beneficial, not harmful, but a targeted creature can attempt a saving throw if it desires." so I think that a animal companion, summoned or charmed creature will not attempt to save if the one casting it is the person that charmed, summoned or is bonded to them.

There are a few abilities that increase the HD of creature summoned with Planar Binding and Planar Ally, like Darkfire Pact and Augment Calling.

Some people feel that the added HD increase both the limit to the HD of the strongest creature summoned and the total HD, while other feel that those are different limits and only abilities that specifically say that they increase the maximum HD of the summoned creature increase that value, while abilities that increase the total number of HD summoned don't touch the HD limit of the strongest creature.

So, the question that I hope people will FAQ:

For the planar Ally and Planar Binding spells the limit of the HD of the strongest creature summoned and the total number of HD summoned are the same limit and raising one automatically raise the other or they are 2 different limits and raising one don't change the other?

Preparing a high level adventure I noticed this the potential interation of those 2 spells.

PRD wrote:

Dimensional Anchor

...
A green ray springs from your hand. You must make a ranged touch attack to hit the target. Any creature or object struck by the ray is covered with a shimmering emerald field that completely blocks extradimensional travel. Forms of movement barred by a dimensional anchor include astral projection, blink, dimension door, ethereal jaunt, etherealness, gate, maze, plane shift, shadow walk, teleport, and similar spell-like abilities. The spell also prevents the use of a gate or teleportation circle for the duration of the spell.

A dimensional anchor does not interfere with the movement of creatures already in ethereal or astral form when the spell is cast, nor does it block extradimensional perception or attack forms. Also, dimensional anchor does not prevent summoned creatures from disappearing at the end of a summoning spell.

PRD wrote:

Freedom of Movement
...
This spell enables you or a creature you touch to move and attack normally for the duration of the spell, even under the influence of magic that usually impedes movement, such as paralysis, solid fog, slow, and web. All combat maneuver checks made to grapple the target automatically fail. The subject automatically succeeds on any combat maneuver checks and Escape Artist checks made to escape a grapple or a pin.

The spell also allows the subject to move and attack normally while underwater, even with slashing weapons such as axes and swords or with bludgeoning weapons such as flails, hammers, and maces, provided that the weapon is wielded in the hand rather than hurled. The freedom of movement spell does not, however, grant water breathing.

It has been show several times that the bolded part of Freedom of movement work against all kinds of powers that impede movement.

So what you think, it work even against dimensional anchor, that explicitly state that it block extra dimensional forms of movement or not?

Your form transmutes into living ice, granting you several abilities. You gain the cold subtype and damage reduction 5/magic. You are immune to ability score damage, blindness, critical hits, deafness, disease, drowning, electricity, poison, stunning, and all spells or attacks that affect your physiology or respiration, because you have no physiology or respiration while this spell is in effect. You cannot drink (and thus can't use potions) or play wind instruments.

It don't say "you can't speak", but the no breathing part seem to imply that.

So the question is:
You can speak?

The implications of the answer are very important for spellcasters.

As written I would say that the subject of the spell can't speak, use breath weapons and so on, but it is a implied thing.

I have just found a smallholding in our alliance territory. There is no player around and I don't have any information on who is the owner nor any way, beside asking on several different companies forums, to discover that.
Even if none in the different companies forums to which I have access were to say "it is mine" I wouldn't have any way to be sure if it is owned by some friend, foe or neutral character.
To me that seem problematic and it will become even more problematic the day we get the ability to damage or destroy one.

A placed smallholding will reduce my ability to place another, so it is interesting to know if it is allowed to be there or not and depending from a out of game source to know that seem wrong.

In my area (SE) the beast pelts are rare when compared with the needed quantities. Even in hexes with the best chance of finding them (30% of the trash nodes T1 yields) after 3 hours of gathering I get maybe 30 beast pelts.
While doing that I get about 40 animals pelts that are way less used for my recipes (tanner 8).
To me it seem that there is a problem with the relative quantities. they should be proportionated with the quantity used in the recipes for the final products.
In my experience there is a minimal request for tannery products that require animal pelts while there is a big request for products that require beast pelts.
When we compare it with the quantity needed for production it is easier to get the needed T2 pelts than the T1 beast pelts.

Maybe it has been discussed in the other forum, but, if I get exactly how the resources are replenished I think that rare resources in a hex will never have a chance to recover after they are depleted.

I remember a note in one of the Goblinwork blogs (but I can't find it) say something like "automatic replenishment of the resources at DT will be removed in one of the future iteration of the game". Actually I am not even sure if there is now a automatic replenishment of the resources at DT.

Let's hypothesize a hex with 1000 iron and 100 coal.
It is harvested to the point at which both resources are partially depleted, to 500 and 50.
The chance to recover is the same 50% for each resource and both resource recover the same % of the original value, so it seem that both resources will maintain the same ratio 10:1.

Enter my gatherer. I get from 2 to 8 of 1 or 2 resource in one go (miner 6). I suppose the chance to get coal instead of iron are 1 to 10.
Again it seem that the ratio is maintained.

But what happen in reality?

I get 2 units of iron, the chance of iron re-spawning is now 49.8%.
I get 1 iron and 1 coal. The chance of the iron re-spawning is now 49.9% and that of the coal is now 49%.
I get 2 units of coal, the chance of coal re-spawning is now 48%.

A few lucky rolls (and sooner or alter they will happen) and the two resources will go out of sync, with the coal quantity becoming less and less as its chance of recovering decrease way faster than the chance of the iron recovering.
As people will come to the hex to harvest all mineral resources, people hunting for iron will keep the coal in the depleted state, with little or no chance to rise above the minimum value.

Maybe someone with better mathematical skills than me can put that in mathematical terms.

It is possible that the assumption that you get materials from a node based on the starting ratio for the hex and not with the current values is wrong but it seem simpler to have it work that way.

As the title say, I want to contact other Italian and European players.
The ideal result would be to have them join the group of which I am part, the Seventh Veil.
Alternatively, if they have already founded a group that I like I could join them, but I would greatly prefer to have them join my group.

The reasons for this are the usual:
- US players generally have a different playtime, so it is hard to collaborate with them;
- following English speaking people on Teamspeak isn't always easy.

In the foreseeable future our weapons will start to require ammunitions.
So it seem that the resources cost needed to make those ammunitions will set the basic prices of several items.

If you can't sell a unit of ammunition for less than 1 cp either all character using ranged weapons will learn to make their ammunitions or the price of the ammunitions will set the minimum price for coal, iron, yew and whatever is used for the other charges.

And those prices, as they will set the expectations of what you will get for an hour of gathering will set the minimum price for all other materials.

While gathering materials far from my home base I had this thought:
"It would be nice to have someone in the nearest settlement that would compact my coal and iron in a nice iron, less weighty iron bar. Or my copper (especially when I have gathered fine and not solid copper) and other materials for ease of transportation."

So:
- how much would you pay for that kind of service?
- how much would you ask for it?
- it would create problems with excessive gathering?

The idea is that another player will do the gathering and a local player will do the refining-

As the title say every time I get killed I lose the icon that show my position on the in game map and about 2 out of 43 times I lose my destination pin too.
If I try to set a new destination he pin don't appear on the minimap but I see it in the radar, giving me the direction of the hex where I have set it.

Another thing. I often see other players pins in the radar, I think it happen when they set it while we are in close proximity. It is an intended feature (Note: we aren't in a party).

I think that the title say all.
Currently to trade between the two characters in my account I have to pass through a 3rd character owned by some other player.

That require:
1) to have a trusted player logged in at the right time
2) in the right location
3) to be able to log with the two character in a reasonably fast sequence (and more often than not when I re-log I get the message "log in failed")

Essentially you shackle 3 characters to the same location for a fairly long period.

I have just gathered some stuff in the Nothrern Craghorns with my adventuring character. My crafter is in Hammerfelll.
The best option would be to have him come to Golgotha, take the stuff, craft whatever he can locally to reduce his load and them move south with a full load of semi crafter items to finish them in Hammerfell or trade them to other settlement members.

Instead I am forced to have my fighter leave his heavy armor in Golgotha and run to Hammerfell, hoping to find the right player to trade his stuff to him, so that he, in turn can trade the interesting items to my crafting character.

Very inefficient as my crafting character will have the freeholder or expert armor skill to benefit for the increased carrying capacity and will have strong back slotted, while my fighter character will have the normal fighter feats slotted.
This way I am forced to train 2 different set of armor skills on my fighter and reconfigure him for traveling/transportation. Fairly annoying.

As the title say, I don't know where I can see (in game) what are the benefits of increasing a cantip level.
I see that they seem to be more efficient, but I can't see what is that make the difference. The numbers and keywords seem the same.
Probably I am missing something basic, but it is hard to know if I am actually becoming stronger, I will become stronger only I get matching gear or if the increase in power is linked to increasing some other skill to a level that matches the cantrip level.

I am trying to register the materials I get from harvesting and killing NPC and I have a problem when doing that:

some material label (like maple logs) is written in dark blue on a dark background, that make it hard to read. As I am trying to register what I get from each node I have discovered that I am often getting the wrong numbers as the registered total and what I have in my inventory are different.
It is a minor thing but annoying, and if some of the document drop have the same issue reading them will become a core.
I hope it will be only a minor change to make it light blue or some other readable color.

- * -

A second issue is a problem for some of non US keyboard users. We don't have a tilde key and the key in that position (\ for me) don't work for changing weapon set.
Changing the window setting for the keyboard so that it is treated as a US keyboard when playing don't seem a good idea.
it is possible to correct this problem?

All the gathering was done in the plains and forest area just south of the hills in the NE corner of the map, mostly the row of hexes running from the eastern corner of TK to the 6 hex south from the right high corner of the map (hex 2906 if we were reading a boardgame map).
I did spent time killing the easy mobs.

Some consideration
My primary goal was to gather logs for my sawyer alt.
The result is negative, more than 4 hours of gathering and I have got, at most enough wood for him to work for a few minutes.

Secondary goal: gathering coal. Here we have got better results. but in a strange way, as I was able to gather way more coal in the trash heaps than searching for the same time (more than 4 hours) in the hills (only 10 units of coal).

Instead I have got a good number of materials that are useful to other crafting professions.

If we had a good market that wouldn't be a problem, I would be capable to trade those materials for the ones I want (but still there would be some problem as the logs numbers seem low when compared to those used by the different recipes), but currently the market utility is low.

Dropping the unwanted items to reduce my load would have increased my endurance on the field a bit, but with the current respawning mechanic for the materials, I would have damaged the whole crafter businesses as I would have removed those items from general availability, depleting the local resources without getting any utility from that.

Conclusion
Total numbers seem right, the problem is our inability to influence them.
My aim is to get logs and instead I get 29 units of potent Hyssop and 25 of potent Tansy leaves. AFAIK I have no way to influence those numbers.

I have gone to the North to gather some pine log and coal in the hills.

So far:
- I have found Yew in the forest hex 2 hexes NW of Thornkeep
- no pine log in plant nodes in the hills so far
- visiting something like 8 earth nodes in the hills where previously was located 55% of all the coal in the game I have found only one with coal, for 2 units total.

It seem that the rarity/locations of the resources we can harvest have been changed. Any information on that?

For sure the boundary of the pine logs territory have been pushed further north. Someone know where it can be found?

The harvested materials slow us down, running up an down to our harvesting point to our settlement or a nearby settlement where we can do some refining to reduce the total weight of the item will take time.
Wearing armor will reduce our carrying capacity and so our speed.

The best way to do some harvesting while fighting the local mobs to keep their number down is to have a local storage point where you can drop off the gathered materials, the salvage and your armor while you are working in a mostly pacified area.
Even more important, a location where you can leave your armor and weapons while you transport the harvested materials to the nearest settlement.
So it seem fairly important to get theme early in the game.

If you select Chat you get a Local label in your chat window. It is the same as local? What is the range?
Party seem straightforward
Hex the same
Local: what is the range? 1 hex, more, Less?
Help: again it seem straightforward. Some reason not to use it as the standard chat if its range is unlimited (as least until we get a lot of traffic in it)?

A simple question:
NPC drop basic light, medium and heavy armor, but AFAIK, they never drop cloth armor. The material cost of making one is relatively high so no one will make the basic versions to sell it to new players.

There is a way to get the basic arcane spellcaster armor without crafting it, like ti is possible to get the light/medium/heavy armors?

Heavy armor decrease or maximum carrying capacity when worn and that slow us down a lot, strong back at 1 don't seem to have any meaningful effect, so I think wost character will walk around naked, donning their armor just before a fight.
"Wait while I don my armor" will become a common refrain.

Changed base stats of Medium armor so it's a (hopefully more desirable) synergistic hybrid of Light and Heavy rather than an exact midpoint of bonuses and penalties. Specifically, its base armor improved by 3, its crit resistance improved by 4, its spell penalty was reduced by 10, its Reflex penalty was reduced by 5, and its encumbrance penalty is closer to light than to heavy armor.

What is the effect of this spell penalty? To what spells it is applied?

So far I have used only 2 divine spells, while I have used a lot of arcane cantrips so it is perfectly possible I have not seen this modifier in effect, but I would like to know what it do.

So far going around in heavy armor was a good choice even for arcane spell users, that can change it.

Dodging Panache (Ex): At 1st level, when an opponent attempts a melee attack against the swashbuckler, the swashbuckler can as an immediate action spend 1 panache point to move 5 feet; doing so grants the swashbuckler a dodge bonus to AC equal to her Charisma modifier (minimum 0) against the triggering attack. This movement doesn't negate the attack, which is still resolved as if the swashbuckler had not moved from the original square. This movement is not a 5-foot step; it provokes attacks of opportunity from creatures other than the one who triggered this deed. The swashbuckler can only perform this deed while wearing light or no armor, and while carrying no heavier than a light load.

èquote=PRD]Pounce (Ex) When a creature with this special attack makes a charge, it can make a full attack (including rake attacks if the creature also has the rake ability).

Format: pounce; Location: Special Attacks.

A dire tiger charge a swashbuckler and pounce him.

The swashbuckler use Dodging Panache and move 5' away from the tiger.
The tiger make his first attack (they are resolved in sequence), hit or miss but fail to grab the swashbuckler, so now he is 10' from the tiger and out of its reach.
The tiger is incapable to make the remaining attacks of its pounce and its attack end.

Same thing against a guy with iterative attacks that has already taken his 5' step.

Thanks to an invitation from a friend I have 2 accounts.
One for a pure crafter character, one for an adventuring character.

Most of the time I play the adventuring character and log in the crafting account only to set some crafting queue, learn some recipe and train.

I have a strange problem: when I log off with one account and then try to log in again the log in fail, even if several hours have passed. But, most of the time, if I log in in the other account and then log off the problem clear and I can log in in the adventuring account.

It seem a bit strange, like the was some kind of residual presence that stop me from logging in until I completely clear the username/password fields.

Someone can give me an indication on how commons are the spells and who drop them?
So far I have found 2 of them, both too high for my equipment (1 3rd level divine spell and 1 2nd level arcane).

An introductory spellbook do very little when you have nothing to put in it.

Just for comparison,so far I have found 1 trophy.

The day that we will get a functioning AH and a lot of people playing they will be a dime the dozen as, AFAIK, you never lose them after learning them, so you have to get them only once, but for now the are extremely scarce.

I have all the gathering skills at 4 and and most if not all the knowledge skills at 5.
Sometime I find nodes that say "you don't have the skill to ahrvest anything here", generally several of them in close proximity, but in one occasion they where all the nodes I found moving away from a settlement for more than 2 hexes (at the end of my trek I was about 2 and a half hexes away from the nearest settlement).
It is working as intended? Having nodes that contain only high level stuff is an intended mechanic?

Added question: some node disappear in a short span of time after it has been harvested, other persist for a longer time, sometime apparently not despawning at all.
It is because the node has some stuff that could be harvested with a higher skill?

Fairly often when our character resurrect at a Pharasma shrine there are NPC camped near it, NPC that attack immediately and kill the character again, even if you try to run away (too often they have the bombs that change your character heading or effects that slow him down).
Las time I have been killed 3 times in a row, always respawning at the same shrine. The 4th time my previous attempts to run away had scattered the packs of goblins and wolves enough that I was able to run away.

A small time frame in which the character is untargettable (and can't target anyone but can move/hide) after respawning would avoid this problem.

As the title say, after I have been ejected from the game I often are unable to reenter it for an extended period with the same account, while I am able to log in with a different account. We are talking of at least 1 hour, yesterday I was ejected and now, 6 hours later, I am still unable to log in.
It is a common occurrence?

Edit: this time, after logging in with a different account I was able to log without problems, but that didn't happened when I tried it in the past.
It can be that after a game crashes some data is left in my PC that hinder relogging?

Regularly, twice a year, when the West Coast change its daylight saving hour the forum users from the UE don't see their new posts. Probably because we change our daylight saving hour a week earlier than the US.

This year it has been resolved way earlier than the other years, my compliments to the forum Ninjas, but it would be nice not to see it happen again.

I recall that there was an idea about keeping the content of the Auction House at the end of the Alpha stage as a seed of the market during Early Enrollment. As I have only recently returned to these forums after a long absence, it has been finalized?
Or the AH will be empty at the start of EE?

One of the players in my campaign is thinking to reskin his level 12 witch as a shaman. They are approaching a point where, story wise, that would be acceptable. It can even be appropriate, the witch getting a closer bond with the nature spirits of her land.

The shaman get the same number of spells of s cleric: a maximum of 4 spell at each level, plus what is essentially a domain spell.

But:
- she get to choose spontaneously what spell she want to cast instead of having to memorize it.
- at 4th level with the wandering spirit she get to chose the second "pseudo domain" every day.
- at 6th level the wandering spirit allow her to chose a new hex for a limited list every day.
- at 12th level the wandering spirit give her its greater ability, again an ability that can be changed every day.
- at 14th level a second wandering hex

Essentially she get a lot of re-customization every day.

My idea is to give her a short list of allowable spirits, appropriated to the character and the setting.

Combat while Mounted: With a DC 5 Ride check, you can guide your mount with your knees so as to use both hands to attack or defend yourself. This is a free action.

When you attack a creature smaller than your mount that is on foot, you get the +1 bonus on melee attacks for being on higher ground. If your mount moves more than 5 feet, you can only make a single melee attack. Essentially, you have to wait until the mount gets to your enemy before attacking, so you can't make a full attack. Even at your mount's full speed, you don't take any penalty on melee attacks while mounted.

While reading other stuff I had this weird idea: it is possible to use spell combat while riding in combat?

(obviously getting only 1 melee attack)

Spell combat is a full round action, not a full attack so the rule above don't stop you from using it.
If your ride skill is high enough you can direct your mount with the knees with ease.

The concentration check, if needed, if fairly easy (DC10+spell level) so it is rarely a problem.

Essentially you get the possibility to cast a ranged or utility spell before moving and then attacking at the end of your move. Don't seem a bad options in the few encounter where you could to use it.

Added questions, you can use spell combat + spellstrike to get 2 attacks?
(there is no problem with casting a touch spell and using spellstrike to deliver it)
I think that that don't work as the above limitation is very clear "you can only make a single melee attack".

Comments, ideas, other way to capitalize on this?
something that I am missing?

The target animal grows to twice its normal size and eight times its normal weight. This alteration changes the animal's size category to the next largest, grants it a +8 size bonus to Strength and a +4 size bonus to Constitution (and thus an extra 2 hit points per HD), and imposes a –2 size penalty to Dexterity. The creature's existing natural armor bonus increases by 2. The size change also affects the animal's modifier to AC, attack rolls, and its base damage. The animal's space and reach change as appropriate to the new size, but its speed does not change. If insufficient room is available for the desired growth, the creature attains the maximum possible size and may make a Strength check (using its increased Strength) to burst any enclosures in the process. If it fails, it is constrained without harm by the materials enclosing it—the spell cannot be used to crush a creature by increasing its size.

All equipment worn or carried by the animal is similarly enlarged by the spell, though this change has no effect on the magical properties of any such equipment.

Any enlarged item that leaves the enlarged creature's possession instantly returns to its normal size.

The spell gives no means of command over an enlarged animal.

Multiple magical effects that increase size do not stack.

PRD wrote:

Reduce Animal

School transmutation; Level druid 2, ranger 3

Casting Time 1 standard action

Components V, S

Range touch

Target one willing animal of Small, Medium, Large, or Huge size

Duration 1 hour/level (D)

Saving Throw none; Spell Resistance no

This spell functions like reduce person, except that it affects a single willing animal. Reduce the damage dealt by the animal's natural attacks as appropriate for its new size (see Equipment how to adjust damage for size).